US telco Comcast is once again trying to show the US telecoms watchdog the FCC that it is a toothless wonder.

Comcast is trying to buy Time Warner Cable while AT&T wants DirecTV. However the FCC said it can’t go forward with the review of these deals until a court determines whether interested parties should be granted limited access to confidential information about the involved companies.

The FCC wants to make certain confidential information — which would include contracts that Comcast, TWC, and DirecTV have with broadcast and cable TV networks — available for review by attorneys of third parties with a direct interest in these mergers. This is because the people who might have a problem with Comcast and AT&T getting more monopolistic powers might need to see the paperwork to make an informed comment.

The FCC already has these documents and is free to review them on their own, but the broadcasters do not want the data shared with people outside of the Commission, even if done under high security and strict non-disclosure agreements.

In November 2014, a court granted a preliminary stay against the FCC making these documents available to outside parties, but allowed the Commission to continue to review them on their own, so the deals went forward.

But on February 20, the three-judge appeals court panel heard arguments from both sides regarding the necessity of sharing the information with third parties.

Until the appeals panel issues its ruling on this matter, the FCC says it can’t move forward with the final stage of reviewing these mergers.

US President Barack Obama has written a stiff letter to the FCC to tell them to stop mucking around and come up with some proper net neutrality laws.

Millions of people wrote to the telecom’s regulator asking that telcos be blocked from trying to create a two tiered internet. The FCC however decided that it would continue its policy of doing whatever the telcos tell it – hell anyone would think it was a watchdog rather than a lapdog.

However Obama has said that Internet service providers should be regulated more like public utilities to make sure they grant equal access to all content providers, touching off intense protests from cable and telecoms companies. Obama's detailed statement on the issue of "net neutrality," a platform in his 2008 presidential campaign, was a rare intervention by the White House into the policy setting of an independent agency.

Shares of major Internet service providers Comcast and Time Warner Cable fell sharply after Obama said ISPs should be reclassified to face stricter regulations and banned from striking paid "fast lane" deals with content companies. The president also said the Federal Communications Commission's new rules should apply equally to mobile and wired ISPs, with a recognition of special challenges that come with managing wireless networks.

"Simply put: No service should be stuck in a 'slow lane' because it does not pay a fee," Obama. "That kind of gate keeping would undermine the level playing field essential to the Internet’s growth."

Verizon said that Reclassification would apply 1930s-era utility regulation to the Internet, would be a radical reversal. It would mean the company would not be allowed to do what it liked and charge customers whatever it liked which is not the American way. Verizon in January won a federal court case challenging the FCC's previous set of net neutrality rules, which allowed "commercially reasonable" discrimination of traffic but indicated the FCC would disapprove of pay-for-priority deals.

Consumer advocates have for years pressed the FCC to reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service as a way to have more oversight authority, but ISPs have pledged they would fight the matter in court. Obama and other White House officials acknowledged that the FCC, as an independent agency, would ultimately shape the regulations. His problem is that he only pays their wages. A huge number of FCC members are former telco workers.

The Republicans could not resist sticking their oar in, once again showing a complete indifference about the Internet. Senator Ted Cruz said that “Net neutrality is Obamacare.. It puts the government in charge of determining Internet pricing, terms of service, and what types of products and services can be delivered."

Clearly, he was not aware that the US had net neutrality for the last 20 years and the government had not set any prices at all.

The FCC has decided to enter the Netflix verses Verizon row which could be bad news for the content streaming company. Verizon and Netflix have been feuding in recent weeks over which company is to blame for slow streaming speeds.

Federal Communications Commission chair Tom Wheeler said has directed his staff to gather information on the dispute from Netflix and broadband providers including Verizon to understand "precisely what is happening" and "whether consumers are being harmed."

While in any civilised country a company like Netflix would welcome the appearance of a telecom’s watchdog to curtail the antics of a comms company, in the US it has a lot to be worried about. This is because the US watchdog has been stacked with former employees of the telecoms companies.

Daniel Alvarez, an attorney who has long represented Comcast through the law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP. In 2010, Alvarez wrote a letter to the FCC on behalf of Comcast protesting net neutrality rules, arguing that regulators failed to appreciate “socially beneficial discrimination.”

Then there is Philip Verveer who worked for Comcast in the last year and the Wireless Association (CTIA) and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association. Then there is Matthew DelNero who previously worked as an attorney for TDS Telecom, an Internet service provider that has lobbied on net neutrality. FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai is a former associate general counsel at Verizon and has criticized the open Internet regulations, calling them a “problem in search of a solution.”

Chairman Wheeler, the new head of the FCC, is a former lobbyist with close ties to the telecommunications industry.

Our guess is that the watchdog will end up fining Netflix on a charge of “being annoying to telecoms companies” or “failing to provide a good service to customers by refusing to pay what the nice telecoms companies tell you to pay.”

The U.S. communications regulator seems a bit bewildered that people are upset about it giving in into the US telecoms companies and killing off neutrality. Like many in the US government, the FCC tends to believe that everything that US companies is good and wholesome so its decision to allow "fast lanes" for some content on the Internet, seemed perfectly reasonable.

Consumer advocates slammed the proposal from FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, saying it would let certain content providers pay for access to fast lanes and discourage consumers from going to competitors' sites where videos or other content may load more slowly by comparison. Users effectively have to pay twice for their internet and the bigger content companies who can afford the better service will survive while those who don’t will die off does not seem to have occurred to it. The system also allows the US’s awful telcos to blackmail content providers – so what is there for an outfit which supposed to protect consumers not to love?

Today the FCC said that the agency will monitor and punish broadband providers that treat Web traffic "unreasonably."

"The Federal Communications Commission is weighing rules that would ban Internet providers from blocking access to websites or applications, but would allow content companies to pay for faster Internet speeds delivering their traffic as long as such deals are deemed "commercially reasonable."

The five-member FCC will negotiate the rules before they vote on May 15 to formally propose them and seek public comment. Wheeler said that reports that the FCC is gutting the Open Internet rule are flat-out wrong. In January, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit for the second time struck down the FCC's previous anti-discrimination and anti-blocking rules after a challenge from Verizon Communications Inc. However, the judges did affirm the agency's authority to regulate broadband, giving the FCC new legal opportunity to rewrite the rules.

It was the court's direction that guided Wheeler's proposal to allow commercially reasonable preferential treatment of traffic. The agency will seek public comment before determining how to define "commercially unreasonable" behaviour or a violation of "net neutrality," but it will focus on whether broadband companies' treatment of traffic hurts competitors or consumers, hurts free speech or is done in good faith.

Nvidia's TegraTab that already showed up in a couple of posts online as well as the GFXBench results page, has now appeared at the FCC. The filing also confirms that it is indeed a 7-inch device with a rather unimpressive 1280x800 IPS display.

Although all the specs are not detailed at the FCC, it did show that we are looking at a Tegra 4 equipped device with 7-inch 1280x800 IPS screen, 3200mAh or 4100mAh battery, front HD camera, 5-megapixel rear one, Android Jelly Bean and stylus.

It is also still not clear if Nvidia will sell the device itself or use its partners, but it is now quite clear that device exists and should go against Google's new Nexus 7 and similar budget-friendly devices.

Of course, Nvidia still has to officially announce it and the most important detail will be its price.

Google has a rather terrible track record when it comes to keeping its hardware under wraps. The Nexus 4 was leaked all over the place weeks ahead of launch and now it appears that the Nexus 5 will be no different.

The phone already popped up at a Google event and now we’ve got some juicy specs thanks to the good people of the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC has approved a device codenamed D820. Like the Nexus 4, it also comes from LG’s stable and the design is quite similar.

However, the Nexus 5 features 7-band LTE, and lack of LTE was one of the biggest complains about the Nexus 4. It packs a bigger screen, too. It’s a 5-incher, well 4.96 inches if anyone cares and it’s probably an 1080p unit. The mighty Qualcomm 800 is the silicon behind the show and let’s just hope it’s not neutered by thermal throttling like the APQ8064 used in the Nexus 4.

Anandtech's Brad Molen also dug up another document which states that the dimensions are 131.9mm by 68.2mm, but there’s no word on thickness. The Nexus 4 measures 133.9x68.7x9.1mm, which means the new one should end up a tad smaller in spite of the bigger screen.

There are still a few unknowns though. The Nexus 5 leak points to a much bigger camera lens, but there’s still no word on the actual sensor. We still don’t know anything about storage, either. The previous three Nexus generations topped out at 16GB and the Nexus 4 is available in 8GB and 16GB flavours. However, we believe it’s time for Google to move on and finally offer a 32GB version this time around. A flagship phone with 8GB and 16GB of storage makes absolutely no sense in 2013. It didn't in 2012, either.

In what has to be a stonkingly obvious conflict of interest, President Barrack Obama has appointed a former cable industry lobbyist as the new FCC watchdog.

Tom Wheeler, who has headed lobbying associations for both the cable television and mobile phone industries, is the leading candidate to succeed Julius Genachowski as chairman of the regulatory agency. While most of the press is talking about Wheeler’s contacts within Washington, no one seems to be particularly concerned about his previous job.

Wheeler is a managing director with the private equity firm Core Capital Partners but he was a former president of the National Cable Television Association and the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association. We would have thought that many of the consumer groups would be furious, but it seems they are not. Gigi B. Sohn, president and chief executive of Public Knowledge even said that he will be an independent, proactive chairman.

“Ultimately his decisions will be based on what he genuinely believes is best for the public interest, not any particular industry."

Free Press President and Chief Executive Craig Aaron said that Tom Wheeler on paper did not seem to be the sort of person to stand up to industry giants and protect the public interest. However, Aaron indicated that Free Press is hopeful that Wheeler and the rest of the FCC will "engage the public and make policies that truly benefit all Americans".

RIM has not given up on the PlayBook tablet, and the next models have already been submitted to the FCC. The new PlayBook models will deliver a 3G model with HSPA+ and an LTE compatible model that sources tell us should hit dealer shelves around late May or early June.

The new PlayBook models look to be AT&T LTE compatible as well as offering support for AT&T’s 3G/HSPA+. The unit will be powered by a 1.5GHz processor, which is believed to be dual core, and it will offer NFC support.

Of course, the new units will use Version 2 of the PlayBook OS, which should help gain it traction and expand its user base. Still, it is unknown if this will make the kind of impact necessary to push RIM into the position to be a real player within the tablet market. With the recent launch of the new Apple iPad HD, it is going to be tough sledding for RIM, we suspect.

According to a recent filing with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), it appears that Lenovo is prepping to launch an all-new 9.7-inch IdeaTab later this month featuring an IPS-based display and Google Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

While details are currently scare, the filing suggests that Lenovo will brand the device IdeaTab S2109A (or S2109A-F to be specific). The 9.7-inch IPS display is purported to feature a 4:3 aspect ratio, suggesting that the resolution could be similar to Apple's first and second-generation iPads at 1024x768 pixels. Nevertheless, the tablet will also include a whopping four built-in speakers and a currently unknown Texas Instruments OMAP SoC.

Based on the FCC filing, Lenovo's IdeaTab S2109A is confirmed to launch later this month in at least the United States, Germany, Canada, India, Russia, Turkmenistan, Mexico, Chile, Japan and China, respectively.

Microsoft is telling the US Federal Trade Commission that it needs to think about the poor Internet Marketers before changing the rules on data retention. Microsoft's Bing holds onto IP addresses for six months and cookies for a year and half and claims that this is the best thing for everyone.

Microsoft, who just introduced a 'Do Not Track' feature in the newly released Internet Explorer 9 Web browser, has generally endorsed changes suggested by the FCC. The FCC wants only light regulation but at the same time is under pressure to come up with something that protects user privacy.

The FTC released its set of proposed rules, "Protecting Consumer Privacy in an Era of Rapid Change" in December to address the privacy issues that have arisen in the Internet Age. Redmond “urges the Commission to avoid imposing prescriptive requirements with respect to data retention periods or in further defining 'specific business purpose' or 'need.'” It said that the FTC needs to balance privacy with “accommodating and encouraging evolving or innovative technologies and business models over time.”